The research focus “Professionalisation Processes in Teacher Education” combines the research of the five schools involved in teacher education. From a didactic, disciplinary and educational science perspective, the research focuses on the profession and professionalisation of teachers as a type of performance (Vollzug) that manifests itself in the situated actions of teachers in the classroom and in everyday school life. The focus is therefore on the actions of teachers and the question of how teachers remain capable of acting in complex, dynamic and often unpredictable situations. A central assumption is that professional activity is based essentially on implicit and embodied knowledge. In their everyday professional lives, teachers rely less on explicit, theoretically acquired knowledge and more on routine patterns of perception, interpretation and action that have developed over the course of their professional careers. This implicit knowledge significantly structures how teachers interpret and perceive teaching situations and respond to pedagogical challenges. Research into their professionalisation allows us to reconstruct how this practical knowledge is formed, how it stabilises and how it changes over the course of their professional careers – within the institutional norms of the school and along cultural patterns of interpretation. Against this background, this research makes it possible to reveal how teachers reproduce, modify or even question (normative, social and cultural) orders in their actions, and how educational professionalism is constituted in this field of tension, which is fraught with contingencies and uncertainties. Research into the professionalism of teachers is necessary in order to understand how they grow into the practice of their profession, how professional practices develop in the course of their work, and how professional actions are constituted in the field of tension between individual experiences and institutional structures. In short: we aim to analyse in a differentiated manner the complex conditions under which professional teaching practice arises and develops in a situated manner.

The questions raised will be addressed with a multi-perspective approach, considering competence, structure and professional biography, and further developing cultural and social theory perspectives, with a focus on practice theory. These perspectives, pursued in several research programmes, are reflected in different topoi. The research spectrum covers basic and application-oriented regional, supraregional and international co-operation projects that are interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary in nature. The research focus is visible in numerous projects financed with third-party funding that are interdisciplinary and international in nature. In addition to individual research, it also includes doctoral programmes, research networks and innovative formats for knowledge transfer – for example, on post-digital conditions in schools and teaching, school and teaching knowledge systems, the discussion of sustainability, performance and ability expectations, and the importance of language in schools. The perspectives pursued in several large-scale research projects by now manifest themselves in various research clusters, which in turn are expected to give rise to further joint national and international projects in the future, such as on the topic of “Care in Contexts of Education”. PhD students are supported across faculties and disciplines through various course offerings from the doctoral and graduate programmes. In this regard, the University of Oldenburg looks back on a long tradition of doctoral programmes related to teacher education, most recently the graduate school “Teacher Training 2040” (Grako 2040).

The integration of research and teaching within the framework of research-oriented teaching forms a cornerstone of the research area. The focus on research related to teacher education in Oldenburg already shapes the degree programmes of the participating Schools, and also finds its expression in a mutually beneficial cross-fertilization of topics and in interdisciplinary and international event formats such as series of lectures and colloquia.

The thematic focus is permanently anchored in research, teaching and transfer through the Research Academy at the Didactics Centre of the University. A central structural element is the continuous knowledge transfer, both to the scientific community – supported by numerous national and international co-operations and networks – and to educational practice, policy and society.